fitness frivolity and culinary wizardry peppered with life musings, fried in adventure.

It’s pretty much peak season for festivals around here. In addition to the Tomato Fest there’s also La Festa Italiana, a celebration of all things – you guessed it – Italian.

I was clearly all over that like flies on shit come Sunday, but it wasn’t for pleasure; I had a work assignment, to cover the fest. What did this translate into? Free food, duh.

Pizza, a steak sandwich, and DEEP FRIED KOOL AID. Yea, that exists. I had no idea either, but it was like candy. You apparently make the balls into a paste and deep fry the hell out of them. This was tropical fruit Kool Aid and it was so delicious, especially if you like really sweet eats.

The tasty excursions didn’t end there, but went on way into the night as I attended a family cookout and had some Chocolate Cello that my uncle made. It’s a recipe from the local Wyoming Valley Homebrewers, courtesy of local business Simply Homebrew. I’m not kidding when I say it was like drinking cake batter, in the best possible way.

It was smooth with just a bite of booze behind it. In case you’d like to make it yourself, here’s the recipe.

Ingredients:

½ cup grain alcohol (more or less to taste)

4 ¼ cups of Half and Half

18 ounces of chocolate (1 ½ bags of chips work)

2 cups sugar

Directions:

Melt chocolate in a bowl over simmering water or in a double boiler. Stir until smooth & creamy.

Add sugar, a little at a time, and mix well.

In another pan, warm the half and half – DO NOT BOIL.

Mix the chocolate/sugar mixture with the warmed half and half.

Mix until very smooth, about 5 to 10 minutes.

Add the grain, mix well.

Bottle and keep refrigerated.

And, people, this was only a little of my Labor Day weekend. As you saw yesterday, shit got really artsy. I had no idea Boy was so artistic, but he seriously is. It’s super sexy when a guy can accomplish such things with his hands.

I found this idea on Pinterest and I think we executed it quite well. (After he cleaned up my initial paint job, which looked like it was done by a 5-year-old.)

You aren’t seeing things – that is an R2D2 garbage can.

And then he got nuts with the pop art.

Come on, how cool is that!? I was blown away by how awesome it came out.

He couldn’t get enough of it, so now he’s planning 9 of these panels in a 3×3 formation on one wall of the man cave. The theme? Well, I’ll let you guess….